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perception may be explained by the fact that the object perceived is their common product ? But how could
there be
(66) anything common, in the matter of quality, between an elementary visual sensation and a tactile
sensation, since they belong to two different genera ? The correspondence between visual and tactile
extension can only be explained, therefore, by the parallelism of the order of the visual sensations with the
order of the tactile sensations. So we are now obliged to suppose, over and above visual sensations, over
and above tactile sensations, a certain order which is common to both, and which consequently must be
independent of either. We may go further : this order is independent of our individual perception, since it is
the same for all men, and constitutes a material world in which effects are linked with causes, in which
phenomena obey laws. We are thus led at last to the hypothesis of an objective order, independent of
ourselves; that is to say, of a material world distinct from sensation.
We have had, as we advanced, to multiply our irreducible data, and to complicate more and more the
simple hypothesis from which we started. But have we gained anything by it ? Though the matter which we
have been led to posit is indispensable in order to account for the marvellous accord of sensations among
themselves, we still know nothing of it, since we must refuse to it all the qualities perceived, all the
sensations of which it has only to explain the correspondence. It is not, then, it cannot be, anything of what
we know, anything of what we imagine. It remains a mysterious entity.
(67)
But our own nature, the office and the function of our personality, remain enveloped in equal mystery. For
these elementary unextended sensations which develop themselves in space, whence do they come, how
are they born, what purpose do they serve ? We must posit them as so many absolutes, of which we see
neither the origin nor the end. And even supposing that we must distinguish, in each of us, between the
spirit and the body, we can know nothing either of body or of spirit, nor of the relation between them.
Now in what does this hypothesis of ours consist, and at what precise point does it part company with the
other ? Instead of starting from affection, of which we can say nothing, since there is no reason why it
should be what it is rather than anything else, we start from action, that is to say from our faculty of
effecting changes in things, a faculty attested by consciousness and towards which all the powers of the
organized body are seen to converge. So we place ourselves at once in the midst of extended images; and in
this material universe we perceive centres of indetermination, characteristic of life. In order that actions
may radiate from these centres, the movements or influences of the other images must be on the one hand
received and on the other utilized. Living matter, in its simplest form, and in a homogeneous state,
accomplishes this function simultaneously with those of nourishment and repair. The progress of such
matter consists in
(68) sharing this double labour between two categories of organs, the purpose of the first, called organs of
nutrition, being to maintain the second : these last are made for action; they have as their simple type a
chain of nervous elements, connecting two extremities of which the one receives external impressions and
the other executes movements. Thus, to return to the example of visual perception, the office of the rods
and cones is merely to receive excitations which will be subsequently elaborated into movements, either
accomplished or nascent. No perception can result from this, and nowhere, in the nervous system, are there
conscious centres ; but perception arises from the same cause which has brought into being the chain of
nervous elements, with the organs which sustain them and with life in general. It expresses and measures
the power of action in the living being, the indetermination of the movement or of the action which will
follow the receipt of the stimulus. This indetermination, as we have shown, will express itself in a reflexion
upon themselves, or better in a division, of the images which surround our body; and, as the chain of
nervous elements which receives, arrests, and transmits movements is the seat of this indetermination and
gives its measure, our perception will follow all the detail and will appear to express all the variations of
the nervous elements themselves. Perception, in its pure state, is then, in very truth, a part of things. And as
for affective sensation, it does
(69) not spring spontaneously from the depths of consciousness to extend itself, as it grows weaker, in
space; it is one with the necessary modifications to which, in the midst of the surrounding images that
influence it, the particular image that each one of us terms his body is subject.
Such is our simplified, schematic theory of external perception. It is the theory of pure perception. If we
went no further, the part of consciousness in perception would thus be confined to threading on the
continuous string of memory an uninterrupted series of instantaneous visions, which would be a part of
things rather than of ourselves. That this is the chief office of consciousness in external perception is
indeed what we may deduce a priori from the very definition of living bodies. For though the function of
these bodies is to receive stimulations in order to elaborate them into unforeseen reactions, still the choice
of the reaction cannot be the work of chance. This choice is likely to be inspired by past experience, and
the reaction does not take place without an appeal to the memories which analogous situations may have
left behind them. The indetermination of acts to be accomplished requires then, if it is not to be confounded
with pure caprice, the preservation of the images perceived. It may be said that we have no grasp of the
future without an equal and corresponding
(70) outlook over the past, that the onrush of our activity makes a void behind it into which memories flow,
and that memory is thus the reverberation, in the sphere of consciousness, of the indetermination of our
will.-But the action of memory goes further and deeper than this superficial glance would suggest. The
moment has come to reinstate memory in perception, to correct in this way the element of exaggeration in
our conclusions, and so to determine with more precision the point of contact between consciousness and
things, between the body and the spirit.
Perception is less
We assert, at the outset, that if there be memory, that is, the survival of past images, these images must [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]